1600-1754: Science and Medicine: Chronology

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1600-1754

IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1600-1754

1602

• Sebastian Vizcaino sails from New Spain and explores the California coast as far north as Cape Mendocino.
• Englishman Bartholomew Gosnold explores the coast of New England from Maine to southern Massachusetts.

1603

• Samuel de Champlain arrives in New France (Canada) and explores the Saint Lawrence River valley.
• Englishman Martin Pring explores Cape Cod.

1604

• Edward Grimston’s translation of José de Acosta’s The Naturall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies, a description of Central and South America, is published in England.
• Juan de Oñate leads a military expedition from New Spain and explores the Colorado River.
• Samuel de Champlain explores the northeast coast from Nova Scotia to Cape Cod.

1605

• George Weymouth of England explores the coast of Maine and Saint Georges Bay, Newfoundland.

1608

• John Smith explores the Chesapeake Bay.

1609

• Henry Hudson explores the Hudson River.
• Samuel de Champlain discovers Lake Champlain.

1610

• Dr. Lawrence Bohun of Virginia sets up the first botanical garden in the British colonies.
• Henry Hudson sails into Hudson Bay.
• The viceroy of Mexico, Luis de Velasco, Marqués de Salinas, draws a map of the North American Atlantic coast.

1612

• The first hospital in the British colonies is established at the James River.
• John Smith’s A Map of Virginia is published in England.
• William Strachey pens The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, an account of the natural history of Virginia.
• Marc Lescarbot’s History of New France, a description of the Saint Lawrence River Valley, is published in Paris.

1614

• Apr.–July John Smith explores the coast, observes the natural features, and studies the Algonquin tribes of New England.

1615

• Samuel de Champlain explores the region of Lake Huron and Lake Ontario.

1616

• English explorer William Baffin explores Baffin Bay in search of the Northwest Passage.

1619

• Ironworks are built at Falling Creek, Virginia.

1621

• The first gristmill is built at Jamestown, Virginia.

1622

• The population of Virginia is fifteen hundred.

1624

• John Smith’s The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles is published in England.

1625

• The Brigg’s Map shows California as an island detached from the continent.
• Of the six thousand immigrants who have arrived in Virginia since 1607, only twelve hundred are still living.

1628

• The first gristmill is built in Massachusetts.

1634

• William Wood’s New England’s Prospect, an account of the topography and natural history of the region, is published in England.
• Frenchman Jean Nicolet explores Lake Michigan.
• Dutch explorer Härmen Van den Bogaert explores the Oneida country of upstate New York.

1636

• Harvard College opens.

1638

• The first American printing press begins operations in Boston, Massachusetts.
• June The first recorded earthquake occurs in New England.

1642

• Darby Field and two Native American companions make the first ascent of Mount Washington, New Hampshire, the tallest peak in New England (6,288 feet).

1648

• Ironworks are built at Saugus, Massachusetts.

1651

• John Farrer publishes his Maff of Virginia, which erroneously shows the Pacific Ocean just west of the Appalachian Mountains.

1652

• John Sherman and Jonathan Ince explore the Merrimack River and discover Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.

1658

• A hospital for Dutch soldiers is established at New Amsterdam.

1659

• The first argument in the British colonies for Nicolaus Copernicus’s heliocentric theory is published by Zechariah Brigden in his almanac.

1660

• Frenchmen Pierre Radisson and Chouart des Groseilliers explore Lake Superior.

1662

• The Royal Society of London for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge is founded.

1663

• John Winthrop Jr. becomes the first American elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London.
• Naturalist John Josselyn climbs Mount Washington, New Hampshire.

1669

• Joseph West establishes an experimental garden in South Carolina on the Ashley River.

1670

• John Lederer reaches the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia.

1671

• Thomas Batts and Robert Fallam are the first British colonists to explore the Appalachian Mountains.

1672

• John Winthrop Jr. presents Harvard College with a three-and-one-half-foot telescope.
• French Jesuits Claude Dablon and Claude-Jean Allouez map the Lake Superior region.
• John Josselyn publishes New Englands Rarities Discovered.

1673

• The French trader Louis Jolliet and the Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette explore the Mississippi River.

1674

• John Josselyn publishes An Account of Two Voyages to New-England.

1680

• Thomas Brattle uses the Harvard College telescope to study Newton’s Comet.

1682

• 9 Apr. After voyaging down the Mississippi River, French explorer René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle reaches the Gulf of Mexico.
• Sept. Increase Mather and his sons Cotton and Nathaniel use a telescope to analyze Halley’s Comet.

1683

• The Boston Philosophical Society is founded.

1685

• James Roseboom explores the region of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan.

1687

• Charles Morton publishes Compendium of Physics, the standard natural history text used at Harvard College.
• 18 Jan. The aurora borealis is seen in New England.

1693

• Dutch explorer Arnout Viele explores the Ohio River valley.

1697

• Louis Hennepin publishes the first engraving of Niagara Falls in his New Discovery of a Very Great Country.

1700

• John Lawson explores upper North and South Carolina.
• Spanish priest Eusebio Francisco Kino explores the region of the Gila and Colorado Rivers.

1708

• The first known copy of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) arrives in America.

1710

• The Pennsylvania rifle is invented by German gunsmiths residing in Pennsylvania.
• A packet boat establishes regular communications between England and New York.

1714

• French explorer Etienne Veniard de Bourgmont ascends the Missouri River.
• English explorer John Lawson publishes A History of Carolina.

1716

• Virginia governor Alexander Spotswood journeys up the James River through the Blue Ridge Mountains.

1718

• Guillaume Delisle prints a map of the territory of Louisiana.

1719

• Frenchman Bénard de La Harpe explores as far westward as Oklahoma.

1720

• Cotton Mather publishes The Christian Philosopher.

1721

• The first successful smallpox inoculation occurs in Boston.

1727

• New Englander Isaac Greenwood gives a series of sixteen public lectures on science.
• Earthquakes rattle New England.
• Benjamin Franklin’s junto, the forerunner of the American Philosophical Society, is established in Philadelphia.

1728

• Danish explorer Vitus Jonassen Bering sails through the Bering Strait, proving that Asia and America are separate land masses.
• Cotton Mather dies.

1729

• Frenchman Chaussegros de Léry explores the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers.

1730

• Philadelphian Thomas Godfrey improves the mariner’s quadrant for determining latitude at sea.

1732

• Benjamin Franklin publishes the first Poor Richard’s Almanack.
• Englishman Mark Catesby publishes the first edition of Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands.

1733

• English agriculturist Jethro Tull publishes Horse-Hoeing Husbandry, advocating the use of the plow to keep fields fertile.
• An experimental garden is established near Savannah, Georgia, for testing the horticulture of such items as coffee and tea.

1734

• Virginia physician John Tennent publishes the popular medical guide Everyman His Own Doctor: Or, the Poor Planter’s Physician.

1736

• The Medical Society of Boston is founded.

1738

• The Frenchman Sieur de La Verendrye explores North Dakota.
• A smallpox epidemic starts in South Carolina.

1739

• Pierre and Paul Mallet reach the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in present-day Colorado and New Mexico.

1742

• Benjamin Franklin invents the Franklin stove.

1744

• Benjamin Franklin organizes the American Philosophical Society “for promoting useful knowledge.”

1745

• Isaac Greenwood, the first Harvard Hollis Professor and a mathematician and physicist of note, dies.

1747

• Benjamin Franklin coins the terms positive and negative to refer to electrical charges.
• New England physician William Douglass publishes A Summary, Historical and Political, of the... British Settlements in North America.

1748

• Peter Kalm arrives in America as the scientific emissary of Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus.

1750

• Dr. Timothy Walker crosses the Appalachian Mountains and reaches the Cumberland Gap.
• Parliament restricts colonial iron production in the Iron Act.

1751

• Christopher Gist of Maryland crosses the Appalachian Mountains into Kentuck.
• American naturalist John Bartram publishes his natural history of upstate Pennsylvania and New York.
• English patron of science Peter Collinson publishes Benjamin Franklin’s letters to him about electricity as Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America, by Mr. Benjamin Franklin.
• Franklin writes Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind.
• Philadelphia scientist and patron of science James Logan dies.

1752

• Benjamin Franklin’s kite experiment proves that lightning is electricity.
• Franklin proposes the use of the lightning rod on buildings.
• The American colonies adopt the New Style, or Gregorian, Calendar, making 1 January the first day of the year; in the Old Style, or Julian, Calendar the year started on 25 March.
• William Douglass, Boston physician and participant in the smallpox inoculation controversy, dies.
• The Pennsylvania Hospital, the first permanent American hospital, opens its doors at Philadelphia.

1753

• Americans attempt to observe the transit of Mercury across the disk of the sun.

1754

• Philippe Buache’s map of Louisiana appears.
• Benjamin Franklin publishes Some Account of the Pennsylvania Hospital.